


Crescendo

by Cybra



Series: "Last Christmas!" Carols [2]
Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Episode Related, Gen, Missing Scene, Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-03-13
Packaged: 2019-11-17 12:42:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18098735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cybra/pseuds/Cybra
Summary: Year after year, the stranded Ghost of Christmas Past searches Killmotor Hill for Scrooge, but his desperation isn't for himself.





	Crescendo

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the “Painful Transformation” square of my bingo card from Bad Things Happen Bingo. Part of what will now be a trilogy of stories surrounding “Last Christmas!” (Here’s hoping I don’t get any more ideas.) Also did a minor edit to Verse Six of “Ten Christmas Eves” since I noticed a glaring (to me) mistake that I couldn’t just ignore.
> 
> **Disclaimer:** _Ducktales_ belongs to the Walt Disney Company.

“Scrooge!  Are you here?!  Are you now?!  _Scrooge!”_

Despite the blizzard, the cricket flew easily through the maelstrom.  Being a spirit had its perks in that he merely had to turn intangible to avoid the ice crystals falling so fast that they would’ve shredded his tiny body had he been a mortal cricket.  However, he didn’t care about the weather, hands cupped around his mouth as he shouted to be heard over the wailing wind.

“Scrooge!  If you can hear me, I’m sorry!  I was wrong!  Please answer me!”

The Ghost of Christmas Past paused, listening intently for an answer.  However, when none came, he swallowed a sob and resumed his flight around Killmotor Hill.

Every Christmas Eve since he’d been stranded, he frantically searched like this.  The rest of the year he was pulled away from the world into the limbo where he and his fellow Christmas Spirits dwelled between Christmas Eves but was kept separate from the current versions of himself, Present, and Future.  He couldn’t warn them, couldn’t stop himself from making a dreadful mistake, couldn’t even borrow his past self’s timebrella to find and save his dear friend from the awful fate Past had likely thrust upon him.

When Scrooge had stolen the timebrella to escape from Past’s eternal Christmas Eve, the spirit hadn’t been worried at first.  Scrooge would come back; he _always_ came back.

Four hours later, Past had not only accepted that what he’d done was _wrong_ and had wanted nothing more than to apologize, but he’d also realized that it might not be that Scrooge _wasn’t_ coming back:

Scrooge might not _be able_ to come back.

Not all magical artifacts could be properly used by mortals.  How much control had Scrooge actually had over where and when he’d be going when he’d activated the timebrella?  Past had never let the people he’d previously interacted with manipulate it, so there was no telling if it would return the man to his present all on its own or…

…or if Scrooge was now lost in the past.

That terrifying possibility had prompted him to launch himself off of the log where he’d been waiting, hoping, praying that Scrooge had merely been teleported a small distance or time away.  He’d searched all night, calling Scrooge’s name over and over but seeing no one but his friend’s past self in passing.  (The man had been startled by hearing his name but never found the source since Past hid lest he further disrupt the timestream.)  When the sun rose on Christmas morning, Past had been ripped away from the mortal world for the first of many, many years to wait and worry.

He’d lost count of the Christmas Eves, the only markers of time being the construction of the mansion he’d become familiar with over ten years of visits to the house’s master and the growth of Duckburg surrounding the Hill.  However, he never left Killmotor Hill.  If Scrooge _was_ trapped in the past, the man would know where and when to find him so Past could take them both back to their proper time.  Present and Future had a chance of being able to send themselves back to their present (none of their time manipulation powers worked precisely the same way so there was a small possibility that they were stranded just as he was), but only Past could search the past; his two friends and counterparts had no way of mounting a rescue for either him or Scrooge.

During the long stretches between Christmas Eves, the most horrifying possibility he refused to acknowledge during his searches replayed over and over in his head.  In his mind’s eye he saw Scrooge ending up stranded even farther back in the past, dying decades if not _centuries_ before he’d ever been born.  He could clearly imagine the torment Scrooge went through by knowing he would never see the family he’d longed to be with ever again.

All because Past had selfishly tried to keep the man to himself, too absorbed in his own loneliness and sorrows to consider another’s happiness.

“Scroooo— ** _Ah!”_**

Past tumbled, falling through the barren tree branches until he landed in the snow.  He turned his head to look over his right shoulder and saw one of his wings was crookedly bent, the injured limb dusted with ice from the flurry that had struck it.

“That hurt,” he whispered. “Why did that hurt?”

He was a spirit.  He could easily turn intangible so the ice and snow could phase right through him.  That was precisely what he’d done when he’d been returned to the Hill from limbo and had started his yearly search.  Yet not only had the snow struck him, it had _hurt_ him as if he were made of flesh.  It was only then that he realized he was _cold_ when he should’ve felt nothing more than a distant chill at worst.

He turned back forward, buzzing his wings with all his might.  “I’ve gotta keep looking.  If Scrooge is here now, he’ll feel worse than a little cold; he’ll freeze to death.”

His injured wing struggled to help him lift off and stay in the air.  It ached fiercely, but Past didn’t care.  He had to find Scrooge.  Even if the man never forgave him for trapping him in the past, he needed to at least send his friend home to his family.

Tears squeezed free of his eyes as he narrowed them in an attempt to see through the blinding white.  A particularly harsh gust of wind sent him spiraling to the Earth again.  He landed hard on the icy ground, lying there momentarily stunned.

“When’d you go?  When’d you go, Scrooge?” he whimpered.

Then he screamed as white-hot agony seared across his back.  He forced his eyes back open into a squint—he hadn’t even realized that he’d closed them in the first place—just in time to see his wings fly off and dissolve without him.  He stared after where they’d disappeared, reaching out to grasp nothing.

“No.  No, no, _no!”_   Past slammed his fist down onto the ice he lied on.

He was so small.  Without his wings, he had no chance of searching the Hill in a single night!  If his Scrooge did make it back here on a Christmas Eve, they’d likely miss one another!

It would be so easy to give into despair, yet he clenched his teeth, glaring forward, two unfamiliar green lights reflecting off the snow in front of him as he did so.  “No.  I’m not quitting now!  I have to find him!”

He forced himself to his feet and took an agonizing step forward.  His mouth itched and ached.

“I messed up, but I’m going to make it right!  You hear me, Scrooge?!  _I’m gonna make it right and get you home!”_

Was that _his_ voice?  It sounded wrong, distorted.  His teeth felt too big for his mouth.

His antennae somehow stiffened for he no longer felt them whipping about in the wind.

**_“When’d you go, Scrooge?!”_ **

That shout seemed to fully trigger something inside of him.  He screamed as the cold was replaced with more white-hot excruciating pain.  He was burning and melting at the same time.  He was stretched and re-shaped like taffy, every little change taking an eternity to complete.  All the while he kept screaming and trying to push forward.  Despite the pain, he had to keep searching; he had to find Scrooge and take him home.

He tilted a head that wasn’t his own back, pointing a muzzle he’d never had before towards the sky as he howled in a monster’s voice:

**_“SCROOOOOOOOOOGE!”_ **


End file.
